bowerbird

excellent! thanks!

-bowerbird

another interesting topic that floats by on hackernews, with no upvotes (except mine) and no comments (except mine).

does anybody have any suggestions for a smarter site?

-bowerbird

i've developed a system. should be out "real soon now".

but if you want something that's been out for a while, and has been shaken down pretty well, try leanpub.com.

there's also pressbooks.com, and penflip.com, and more.

-bowerbird

ya know, i've see you pointing to this before.

and i should have realized then how cool it is.

but it only occurred to me now. good job, dude!

i will be in touch with you.

-bowerbird

perhaps you meant penflip's loren, not the original poster?

if so, then yes, what i'm saying exactly is that _loren_ could have saved himself time and trouble, in the long run, by coding a purpose-built system, instead of hacking github.

what it would've cost him, however, is the huge "jumpstart" he received by proclaiming his goal as "github for writers".

the kneejerk response to that, from the tech circles, was something that created huge word-of-mouth and mind-share, not to mention a great starting user-base, of technoids.

but that was months ago, and now there's some sense of "whatever happened to penflip?" and when he goes out to sell the system to writers, the "github" label will not be a benefit at all. (if anything, it will be a liability; but i think in general writers are fully unaware of it.)

all of this is my opinion. you, like loren, may disagree.

-bowerbird

i wasn't saying this person should've built a new system.

indeed, what i said is, if you already know git/hub, use it, as you can sidestep its problem areas, to get what you need.

but in the long run, github won't work for most writers. so a purpose-built system needs to be built for them/us...

-bowerbird

don't know why you're getting no discussion here.

couple typos: "the the" and "this is can".

-bowerbird

um... leanpub.com has been around for several years now.

and they only introduced the github integration this month.

so you can't really say that is "_exactly_ what it's about."

or even that it has yet had much of a shakeout in testing.

-bowerbird

if you already know git (or github), it'll work for books.

but i doubt it's the best change-tracking system for them.

too much irrelevant crap, and it doesn't cut to the heart of those things that actually need to be done for a book.

plus, most writers will never slog through learning github.

to make a system that is writer-friendly _and_ does what a book-writing change-tracking system ideally _should_ do, you'd have to hack github so much that -- in the end -- it would have been order-of-magnitude simpler (and better) to program a purpose-built system instead, from scratch.

and yes, i told loren this from day one.

he didn't believe me then.

but if you ask him now, i'll bet he won't be quite so sure.

and by the time he's done, i have no doubt he will agree.

yes, writers need a version-control system.

but no, it is most definitely _not_ github.

-bowerbird

hi. bowerbird here, checking in with you two. i haven't forgotten you, just been working on smoothing out the latest wrinkle in my thinking, which i do believe has made a huge improvement. i'll get some stuff to both of you, quite pronto.

-bowerbird

on the other hand, i know photographers in art/advertising -- working for some of the biggest companies, like apple -- who brag that "not one pixel goes out without being touched".

-bowerbird

I grew up just as computers were becoming mainstream,

the spread of the internet coincided with my teens,

saw the rise of “Web 2.0” during college

i usually eat up these stories.

but your vague phrases, on both sides of the equation, make it impossible to make any sense out of the piece.

you recognize great change has occurred during this time, but without specifying the years, _exactly,_ the message you've sent (and any meaning it might have) is confused.

attaching solid dates -- the exact year when you born, the exact year when you graduated from college, etc. -- would give remarkably more meaningful reference points.

-bowerbird

loved this program when i was working with book-scans!

it saved me _so_ much time and hassle! my best wishes!

-bowerbird

not what i thought it would be.

-bowerbird

markdown was _released_ 10 years ago, that's true.

but it's not entirely accurate to say it was "invented".

let me be more clear: markdown was _not_ "invented".

gruber was blogging with movable type, which was using the _textile_ light-markup system created by dean allen.

so he didn't even come up with the _idea_ himself!

of course, neither did allen. light-markup systems were _the_zeitgeist_ around the turn of the century:

* restructured-text was adopted for python documentation.

(.rst -wikipedia.org/wiki/restructuredtext -- david goodger)

* asciidoc had a big list of org-users. (still does.)

(asciidoc -- wikipedia.org/wiki/asciidoc -- stuart rackham)

* and there were other early entrants that are still alive.

(txt2tags -- wikipedia.org/wiki/txt2tags -- txt2tags team)

and dean allen's textile had a fairly solid reach by 2004:

* textile -- wikipedia.org/wiki/textpattern -- dean allen

* texy -- code.google.com/p/texy-- david grudl

* redcloth -- rubygems.org/gems/RedCloth/versions -- garber

* textpattern -- textpattern.com -- dean allen

but the first that i'd call "light markup" was "setext":

* 1992 -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/setext -- ian feldman

"setext" was short for "structured e-text", and yes, that's why "restructured-text" put the "re" in front of its name, because they were "redoing" the structured-e-text of setext.

but even ian feldman would tell you (if you could find him) that he was merely leveraging the well-known conventions of the fledging internet at the time, such as usenet listserves.

"light-markup" is something that _the_masses_ "invented".

-bowerbird

i think most people will tell you that it _is_ easier.

first, it's one character, as opposed to three or four. and, as you get into longer tags, like "em" or "strong", so grows the amount of excess typing you'll need to do. (i won't mention "blockquote", but you know that i could!)

second, it's the _same_ on both sides, not different. and there's no question about the direction of a slash, which is not intuitive to people who don't code .html.

third, let us recall that some structures, like lists, need internal "li/li" tag-pairs on each individual item, as well as the "ul/ul" tag-pair located on the outside.

fourth, all the brackets/tags are intrusive when editing. your mind has to "look past" the markup to see the text, and those distractions make writing more difficult than it already is, and there's no reason to put up with that.

fifth, the distraction gets even worse if you want to have curly-quotes, because there's crap like “this”; and let’s all agree we don’t need that garbage!

sixth, .html can get downright complicated, very quickly. can you tell me how "pre", "code", and "keyboard" differ? probably not, not just off the top of your head, anyway... and what's the abbreviation tag again? i always forget it.

and seventh, you mean i have to put a "p" tag on _every_ paragraph? _every_ one? can't it just do _that_ for me? it's pretty obvious that blank line means "new paragraph". i mean, seriously, sometimes computers are _so_stupid!_

so, um, yeah, actually, light-markup is a _lot_ easier.

still... if _you_ prefer to write in .html, be my guest!

but me? well, i've got way more important things to do.

-bowerbird

-3 on that one.

i forget this is the tech hangout for the wanna-be-rich.

so now i'm sitting here trying to decide whether i can come up with something that will make you all understand how the super-duper-massively-rich have rigged the game.

poisoned the planet in their winner-take-all grudge-match, killed off animals like they were pit-bulls in a dog-fight, treated the polar ice-caps like ice-sculptures at a party, and kept throwing bigger rocks (a.k.a. bombs) at each other.

and by the time the split shifts the span, and you _might_ figure it out (or maybe not even then), it'll be too late.

way too late.

but i can't come up with anything, except just to say it, and since (as i just said) it'll be too late anyway, then i guess it doesn't even really have to be said at all, eh?

so yeah, chase your dreams, kids, and try to become rich...

probably best not to have any kids of your own, though, because you might find yourself getting attached to them, and worrying about their future, which they will never see, because the human race ran out of time before they got old.

-bowerbird

it's 100% accurate, and a dead-on description of the truth.

because the truth is that effort failed to produce anything.

i'm very sorry that it bothers you. but it is _the_truth._

it is _the_whole_truth_, and it is _nothing_but_the_truth._

now, you can downvote the truth all you like, all the time.

but your downvoting will _never_ change what the truth _is._

as long as we both understand that, we will get along _fine._

-bowerbird

even 0.1% overstates the real number of the ruling class.

google tells me there are some 1600+ billionaires today.

those are the guys (and a few girls) who are really dirty. you can't get (or stay) that rich without hurting people. this is the locus of greed that will sacrifice the planet rather than "give in to someone else having more than me". these are the high-stakes players, the ones who _really_ pull the strings. everyone else is just their string-puppet.

it's also a small enough number that we can closely examine every single one of these individuals to solidly _confirm_ that their avarice and power-broking is truly despicable, so we can confidently brand them as an enemy of the people. this will put them on notice, and give them an opportunity to "opt out" of their bad behaviors and gain our reprieve. let them keep their money and a lavish lifestyle, but only _if_ they can actually reign in their destructive actions.

recognizing the value of a nice sonorous phrase, i suggest "the filthy 1500", so we will set our focus appropriately.

and, given that these are world-class competitive bastards, i'd predict that many will work so they can _make_ the list.

-bowerbird

ok, that didn't take long. can't open your .epub file. it doesn't validate, and i wonder if anyone can open it. so that's a major problem that you will need to solve...

unzipped it to find out why, and discovered it was made with calibre. e-book developers hate that program because it does a rewrite of the underlying .html and .css files, creating an unholy mess that's very difficult to decipher. personally, i won't touch a calibre file; life is too short.

aside from the .epub, the .mobi and the .pdf do just fine in getting the content across, so even though i would likely have done them slightly differently, what you have is fine.

still, if you really want more feedback, i can give it. but the original markdown files would be best, concatenated so they're just one big file, with the text running linearly.

(a book really works best with the whole thing in one file, because that usually minimizes editorial inconsistencies while you're writing, and makes it easier to check later. it also dampens file-clutter considerably, which is good.)

-bowerbird

got 'em, and will take a look at them, and e-mail feedback.

-bowerbird

wow! minus-4 on that post!

hey, _i_ wasn't responsible for the fact that atwood's call resulted in _nothing_happening._

i was one of the people who hoped that it would!

but the hard cold truth is that it went nowhere.

it produced zilch, nada, zip. nothing but hot air.

gruber basically squashed atwood, and that was that.

so let me see if i understand this correctly:

if you _ask_ the question, you get 11 points of "karma".

and if you _answer_ it, truthfully, you get -4 points.

-bowerbird

jamesbritt said:

getting the PDF just right was important to me.

i respect that. how were you generating the .pdf?

*

Since the user can set the font and text size

the idea of page size goes pretty much out the window.

what pagesize did your .pdf have? that's what i meant.

if you put each section on its own e-book screen, and make the sections small enough to fit on one _screen,_ or two, or three, they'll also fit on one/two _pages._

*

Using CSS page-break doesn't quite help,

since it presumes what has come before

and how it fit on the page.

i'm not sure i understand.

so -- for the sake of others reading this thread -- let me explain further. when you create the e-book, if you segment the book into small-enough sections, it'll generally work, across almost all situations, no matter how the person has configured the fontsize. so there, a "screen-break" comes before each section, and before-and-after images you want to fill a screen.

conversely, for the .pdf, you _know_ the pagesize, and the fontsize as well, so you know where pagebreaks are, and you add/delete/change until you get what you want.

*

What's needed is orphan/widow control

and "keep with next" so that, for examples,

related sections can be rendered on one page

or the next but not split across pages.

it would be nice if the programs had enough smarts to do this automatically; until then, you do it manually.

but you don't need indesign to do it; you really don't.

i'd be happy to show you how i'd do your book, if you'd be interested in seeing it, if you send me a copy of it.

*

In practice, though, I found I needed to

aim for some sort of highest common factor

across popular devices, keep test-viewing

the results, and drop anything too clever.

that is the approach that is needed these days, yes.

-bowerbird

what happened to what effort?

the one that failed to produce anything?

well, that's easy: it failed to produce anything.

-bowerbird

pagination and breaks can be problematic in e-books, especially in conjunction with illustrations/captions.

but one shouldn't need to move stuff to indesign, as most e-book viewer-apps support css "page-break" now.

another good tip is to create small chapters/sections, recognition that screens tend to be smaller than pages.

-bowerbird

"surprising" is one thing.

but it's downright _scary_ how people get so _zealous_ once they firmly believe they are "objectively right".

i don't know if i'm happy or sad this tendency has been adopted by the leftwingers. of course it will help them to battle the rightwingers (who always felt "righteous"), and let me be crystal clear i want the rightwing crushed, but i can't help but think that something has been lost.

i'm unsure you can _beat_ intolerance _with_ intolerance.

-bowerbird

p.s. go ahead and downvote this; it will prove my point.

in our spare time over the past 3 days.

nice work. you went in with a clear head. congratulations.

i will watch your further development.

-bowerbird

i saw ratings all along the scale; that is still the case.

and i don't know, in advance, how "happy" people here are, so even if there _was_ some skew, i couldn't interpret it.

and if i did, it might be "experimenter confirmation bias" -- one of the most insidious and pernicious forms of bias.

and no, it's impossible to know which way the scale runs, because it can run either way. (higher numbers are _not_ always "better", because "top" is often associated with "the top of the charts", where lower numbers are "better". and when i say "i look out for #1", you know what i mean.)

it's also unwise to assume that "happy" equals "better", because this is self-report data, and do we really want people to _report_ they are happy if they really are not? depressed people tell us such pressure to "just be happy" becomes an additional source of stress on the experience.

besides, even if _i_ think i know which way the scale runs, the problem is that i don't have any idea how the people who are _answering_ the survey believe that the scale runs.

all of this is straightforward to anyone who has studied survey-research; it's totally obvious and noncontroversial, certainly not the sort of thing that should be _down-voted_. (yes, it was, indeed, believe it or not. so be it, folks.)

i also didn't post it with any "attitude", and i note that the original poster accepted the note without much fuss...

-bowerbird

this is very good summary of what's out there.

the categories seem to be a bit mixed up, but i don't see very much stuff that is missing -- considering the difficulty of being exhaustive -- except for three large and notable exceptions.

the first one is "multimarkdown composer", which is found at http://multimarkdown.com.

next, "strapdown", at http://strapdownjs.com.

finally, "marky", at http://markdownrules.com.

-bowerbird

which is the happy end, and which is the unhappy end?

didn't say, did you? so how do you interpret the data?

you don't. because you don't know how each person might have interpreted the scale. research demands precision.

-bowerbird